When it comes to online safety—or its flip side, online harms—many countries are grappling with the problem. What is the role of government in establishing guidelines and regulations for the protection of citizens, particularly vulnerable segments of the population, from a range of harms perpetrated by anti-social and even criminal elements via the internet?
Unless you have been living in a cave, you will be well aware of Facebook’s current travails, fed by whistle-blower Frances Haugen’s explosive testimony about how Facebook researched but ignored findings that suggested the company’s algorithms were harming individual users by promoting content that kept them engaged—but at a cost to their mental wellbeing.
This seems to be the prevailing view these days amongst the large digital social media and search platforms when the results of algorithmic selections they have programmed turn out to yield undesirable results.
Should user-generated content (UGC) on social media platforms be free from any regulation and the rule of law, simply because it is user-generated?
Big Tech companies have a knack for wielding the “free speech” argument as a shield to avoid tackling the systemic criminal behavior on their platforms.
In case you had any doubt how YouTube feels about artists, the company made its views clear in November with a sneaky alteration to how it monetizes videos.
It’s been a minute since we last heard from Chris Cox, the man who at one time was, as WIRED put it, “effectively in charge of product for four of the six largest social media platforms in the world.”
“At the heart of the problems with big tech,” she (Yaël Eisenstat) wrote in an article for The Information, “is an issue unlikely to be addressed: company culture.”
Day after day after day, Facebook harms our society, our democracy, and our world. Their role as a haven for piracy is just one small part of their bad business.
Dear Facebook Human Resources, We were recently partaking in some light summer reading by combing through the Community Standards section of your website […]
One wonders why a corporation of this size and influence, one with such reach and the power to influence people’s lives for the better, doesn’t get it.